CPS approves largest school closure in Chicago's history

Months of argument and anguish over Mayor Rahm Emanuel's push for sweeping school closings came to a climax Wednesday as his hand-picked Board of Education voted to shut 49 elementary schools and transfer thousands of children to new classroom settings.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett withdrew her recommendation to close four other schools at the last minute as it became clear some board members would fight to save them.

But the board gave a ringing endorsement to Emanuel's vision for a downsized school system, which he argues will help combat a massive budget deficit and allow the district to distribute scarce resources more efficiently.

Critics were unconvinced, and many forcefully expressed objections during and after Wednesday's board meeting. Ald. Ameya Pawar, 47th, one of several City Council members who spoke on behalf of schools in their wards, argued that schools serve as the glue of many neighborhoods.

"Closing a school is akin to closing a community," Pawar said.

But Byrd-Bennett, in urging a vote for the administration's proposal, said that doing nothing to address underused and poorly performing schools was harmful to children.

"We can no longer embrace the status quo because the status quo is not working for all Chicago schoolchildren," Byrd-Bennett said. "It is imperative that you take the difficult decision but essential steps."

The board voted 6-0 to back Emanuel on closing 48 elementary schools and one high school program. The vote to close Von Humboldt Elementary was broken out, and passed 4-2.

The board's solid support for the long, controversial slate of closings came as little surprise to his critics, chief among them the Chicago Teachers Union, which last week filed two federal lawsuits seeking to block the district from following through on its plan.

CTU President Karen Lewis said the union was still hoping courts would intervene to keep schools open but vowed to leverage voter anger over closings to block the re-election of Emanuel, who has said he was prepared to take a political hit for the closings.

"Well, he will," Lewis declared. "I'm glad he's prepared."

Emanuel held no public events Wednesday, but his office released a statement after the vote in which he acknowledged closings were "incredibly difficult" but added, "I firmly believe the most important thing we can do as a city is provide the next generation with a brighter future."

The decision to shut so many schools in Chicago, while unprecedented in number for a major urban center, did not occur in a vacuum. School systems in many large U.S. cities, facing similar challenges, have also been closing schools.

In March, officials in Philadelphia voted to close 23 public schools, a list significantly pared from a much bolder proposal in the face of the same fierce resistance from parents, students and teachers that has roiled communities for months in Chicago. The Philadelphia cutbacks represented 1 in every 10 schools there, an even larger share than has now been marked for closing in Chicago.

School reform efforts have been launched with fits and starts for years in Chicago, perhaps most notably nearly two decades ago when then-Mayor Richard Daley got the Illinois legislature to cede him broad new power to revamp city schools. Daley saw a rejuvenated school system as key to his efforts to maintain a thriving middle class in the city.

Yet economic and racial diversity have visibly eluded city schools, with 87 percent of the district's 403,000 students coming from low-income families and more than 91 percent from minority households, records show.

The serious underenrollment problem the administration cites as a reason for closings is linked in large measure to an exodus from the city in recent years of middle-class African-American families.

That demographic reality was underscored by board member Mahalia Hines in casting her vote. She likened the problem facing city schools to a nervous dental patient deciding whether to put off necessary oral surgery.

"The decay is too much, and that's why so many middle-class African-Americans have left the city," she said, linking depopulation among blacks directly to problems of the schools.

A recent Tribune/WGN-TV poll found wide opposition to the closings among Chicago voters, in particular among blacks and Hispanics.

The score card from the board's action Wednesday breaks down this way:

47 elementary schools are to close after the current term and two others within two years.

Also to close after this year is a high school program now attached to Mason Elementary School in the North Lawndale neighborhood.

Four elementary schools that had been targeted for closing — Garvey and Mahalia Jackson on the South Side, Ericson on the West Side and Manierre on the Near North Side — gained last-minute reprieves.